By: teri on October 21, 2009

AJ is not like his brother’s when it comes to sleeping and we are feeling it. We’ve blamed all sorts of things on AJs lack of sleep. Our current issue is the fact that AJ is not pooping. As a baby you couldn’t change a diaper without there being something in there, now its so infrequent I find myself wishing for him to have a blowout. It has been 12 days since he pooped and it just so happens that he slept pretty well right around that last time. As days passed he slept less and we blamed his bowels.
Its almost always been his tummy that we blame. For awhile we blamed the things that I was eating so I stopped eating delicious things on his behalf. Then we thought it was the caffeine I was consuming so I stopped drinking soda (boo). But about two days ago Norm and I acknowledged the fact that it may just be time to teach AJ how to sleep.
Unfortunately that could involve crying. Based on what we know of AJ so far, it could involve LOTS of crying and we are not eager to start that.

So the first thing I am trying is to make sure his days and nights are balanced. Meaning that he is awake a good portion of the day so that he can sleep at night. I’m happy to say that last night was the first good sleep we got in, well, in about 9 days. We’ve been tired!
Two nights ago (10/19/2009) was horrible and he didn’t sleep much so it wasn’t a big surprise that he was tired yesterday.
10/20/2009:
I got a bit worried when he slept from about 10:30am (after eating) until about 3pm with a few wake ups in and out of the car, a wake up to eat and about 20 minutes of me caring him around. I figured if I let him sleep that much we were in for another rough night.
After he ate at 3pm we had great wake time until around 4:40 when he started getting a bit fussy. I tried to put him down for a nap but at 5:30 when Daddy got home I was still trying. Dad got you to sleep but you only stayed asleep for about 20 minutes and then you were miserable. We held you and dealt with it.
At 7pm I fed you on one side and you were pretty happy. We read books and put the other boys to bed at 7:30 and then you and I sat and watched TV. You got fussy around 7:40 so I fed you on the other side and put you in bed around 8pm.
At 11pm you cried and needed a pacifier put in (which Daddy did)
Then you went back to bed all the way until 3:15am.
(WooHoo… I went to bed when you did at 8pm so I got 7 hours of sleep with only two interruptions (Ty fell out of his bed and yelped a bit around 1am)
The second WONDERFUL part of last night is after your 3am feeding, you went back down and slept all the way until 6:30am!

That was a good night for us. Lately you have been up and ready to be awake by 4am.